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INTRODUCTION

Among university students, and especially English majors, essay writing is regarded as an essential skill. “Failure to learn and practice writing reasonable lengths of text in school was leading to declining literacy levels and to a college-entry population that could not think critically about intellectual ideas and academic material.” (Liz Hamp-Lyons, 1990 , p. 69) Teachers at Janus Pannonius University find it one of the best ways to test the knowledge of their students by means of either in-class or take-home essays. The kinds that students have to write may vary on a broad scale: it can be a short story, a research paper, a proficiency test or a lesson plan, but they have one point in which they are common, and it is the skill which is needed to complete the task. This skill can be taught: that is why the Writing and Research Skills course was introduced, which aim was to acquaint students with all the basics of successful writing. Knowing the rules of how to create a good piece of writing definitely helps students, but it does not guarantee that the end product will be faultless. Success also depends on such circumstances like how the given student looks upon the task, which belongs to the category of attitude. For example, if a student is afraid of beginning an essay, this fear will surely cause the sad result of a completely wasted introduction. In this research paper, I want to clarify what the attitudes of English majors towards essay writing are and through the collected data, show how student and teacher needs can be brought closer.

METHODS

Besides using written theoretical works, I also introduced data collection from the layer which is the subject of my paper, and it is the layer of university students, especially English majors. The best way of gathering information seemed to be to hand out questionnaires (see Appendix for details) with specific, clear questions and instructions to the chosen persons. To use a number of them which can be said as reliable to draw a conclusion from, I questioned 30 university students who are English majors at the same time. Although all of the participants studied the same subject, I chose 15 people who completed their studies in an average high school with no essay-writing traditions, and 15 who came from Karinthy Frigyes Hungarian-English Dual Language School where a great stress is put on teaching and practising essay-writing techniques. In this way I wanted to get samples from people who have different backgrounds. Among the chosen ones, 17 study at JPU, while the remaining 13 study at Eotvos Lorand University. They all filled out the same questionnaires.

RESULTS AND DISCUSSION

The first part of my questionnaire dealt with the different kinds of writings which required skills in producing texts. I wanted the students to give information on what the ideal length of a specific work should be and why. The first kind of writing was a research paper. Fifteen students answered that the ideal length would be between 1,500 and 2,000. These were the students who did not have any preliminary training, while those who did essay writing in high school found 2,000 - 3,000 - word long essays desirable, because ‘it is the length in which I can include everything that is important’ (Hencsei Vilmos, personal communication, 9. May 1997.). I think, the cause of the difference might be found in the lack of experience: students underestimate their capacities if they encounter something new. The next category was the in-class test: thirty out of thirty considered a 450-600 word long piece ideal, so in this case, different earlier experience in writing did not influence answers. When they were asked why they found this length appropriate, almost all answers were included the words ‘time’, ‘concentration’ and ‘skills can be measured’. To the question of whether a 250 - word long essay is enough to tell much about the students’ knowledge or not, every subject gave the answer ‘no’.

The next part of the questionnaire consisted of questions which focused on the students’ skills in writing an essay. Participants were asked to mark different parts of writing on a scale from one to five, 1 meaning ‘easiest’, 5 meaning ‘hardest’. This section was introduced to show the differences between the fears of students with differing previous studies. Eight categories were set up, the first two probably the most important, including ‘introduction’ and ‘conclusion’. From the fifteen respondents who completed an average high school, fifteen gave 4s and 5s to this part, while among participants in the survey coming from Karinthy Frigyes, three was the most common mark, only two 4s occurred. This result clearly shows that the skills of writing introductions and conclusions can be taught but not to the extent where it is automatic or does not cause problems. There were two categories (‘grammar’ and ‘giving a relevant title’) which were marked with 1s and 2s by everybody, which shows that since these skills do not have anything to do with writing background, they do not mean a problem to anyone among the subjects. Another category (‘vocabulary’) was marked as ‘not quite difficult’ (mainly getting 3s) but it did not show any differences again. Last came the questions on the difficulty of writing topic sentences and reaching the required length in a longer work, meaning at least 1,500 words. Those coming from the dual language school found these parts of writing easy (giving 1s and 2s) but the other group considered them difficult, giving marks from 3 to 5. Again, when the task was in connection with knowledge previously acquired (or not acquired) there were differences in the success level of solving the problem. To the option which allowed students to list any other problematic fields, only a few students wrote problems which were in connection with essay writing techniques. Most of them wrote about the lack of style in their essays, meaning that they do not think about themselves as writers who are capable of hitting always the right tone required for the specific task.

The purpose of the questions which followed was to see which kind of writing did students prefer: the one which does not allow them much freedom, or the other type which lets them do what they would like to do. They were asked to answer the following question: what are the advantages/disadvantages of a ‘free’ and a ‘strict’ essay? The aspects which they found positive about the strict essay were that the requirements are clear, and the theme is given so they do not have to spend time on choosing a suitable topic. The drawbacks were that if the theme is not so interesting or challenging, then it is much harder to write it. As for the ‘free’ one, they mentioned the free choice of topic which allowed them to choose one in which they are really good at. Among the disadvantages, they mentioned that they did not really know what are the expectations towards them, so it is difficult to live up to them . There was another question which was closely connected to the previous questions, and it asked about the essay which students would like to write. From the answers, I can conclude that the ideal essay should be a 500-600 - word long piece which needs creative thinking, but also tells the students what is expected from them.

CONCLUSION

It can be clearly seen from the results and the data that there are differences between the groups. The first surprising result is that those who studied essay writing beforehand were not afraid of numbers, so they found it executable to write any length they are required to. They also had fewer difficulties in such writing related skills as beginning or concluding essays, and also creating good topic sentences. All these findings indicate one conclusion, and it is that those who had earlier experiences in this field can more easily solve these tasks. The only solution remaining for the problem of essay writing is that students should acquire this knowledge before going to universities, for example in high schools. Those students who had preliminary training in essay writing, tackle the problem of creating written works more easily.